Friday 13 January 2012

US Research Works Act: threat to open scholarly communication

The Research Works Act seeks to stop organisations from having conditions in their grants that require research outputs to be made open access. At a time when the UK Government are raising their commitment to open access, and increasing recognition of OA mandates from UK funders, the RWA would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy which requires outputs from publicly funded research to be made freely available on the internet. Further explanation in these posts, and updates to follow:

Stop U.S. legislation that would block public access to publicly funded research, Creative Commons blog http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/31184

Trying to roll back the clock on Open Access: Research Works Act introduced, ALA Washington Office blog http://www.districtdispatch.org/2012/01/trying-to-roll-back-the-clock-on-open-access-research-works-act-introduced/

Research bought, then paid for, New York Times opinion pages http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html?_r=1

Can AAP Members stay neutral in the row over the Research Works Act?, Richard Poynder ‘Open and Shut?’ blog http://poynder.blogspot.com/2012/01/can-aap-members-stay-neutral-in-row.html “the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement…”

Mendeley's response to RWA and SOPA http://www.mendeley.com/blog/academic-features/on-sharing-research-and-the-value-of-peer-review-mendeleys-response-to-sopa-and-the-research-works-act/ 

Not just acronyms: threats to sharing and public access

Several bills that threaten the ability to share content on the internet are currently being discussed in the US. I won’t pretend to understand the full legal details or legislative process, but thanks to some much better informed commentators, it is clear that PIPA/SOPA and the OPEN Acts really need to be stopped in their tracks. Here is a small selection of comments.

PIPA = ‘Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act’
SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act
‘OPEN’ Act = Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act


PIPA, SOPA and the OPEN Act quick reference guide by the American Library Association - Dates and main points of the Acts (thanks to @copyrightgirl for this tip)

When Even The Librarians Are Against SOPA... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/00563216705/when-even-librarians-are-against-sopa.shtml

Urgent: Stop [U.S.] American censorship of the Internet https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/30375

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-they-must-be-on-this-all.html - reddit will have a blackout on 18 Jan in protest, and other major internet services are considering joining the boycott

UKCORR blog post and comments http://ukcorr.blogspot.com/2012/01/sopa-and-app-dumb-and-dumber-publishers.html

..and if all this is not enough to incite outrage, the US House of Representatives have also introduced the Research Works Act – a bill that will stop public access to publicly funded research…

Thursday 12 January 2012

Top full text content in 2011

Here is a quick round-up of a busy and interesting year for Research@StAndrews:FullText

In June we celebrated reaching the landmark total of 1000 items in the repository. We finished the year with 1247 items. During 2011 we deposited 178 theses, 143 articles, 116 reports and conference items, 15 book chapters and one complete book.


In 2011 there were 33,721 visits to the repository from 164 countries











The most viewed item in every month of 2011 except one was

Retrospective power analysis by Len Thomas
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/679

with 1853 views for the year






The second most viewed item of 2011 was

Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland (PhD Thesis) by Cormac G. Booth
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1701

We began recording downloads in August 2011, and this thesis recorded the most downloads for the year



We had a range of PhD theses from several disciplines represented in our Top 10 'most viewed' and 'most downloaded' lists for 2011, including
Top 10 viewed items for 2011

Retrospective power analysis [1853]
Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland [648]
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism [645]
What is social learning? [470]
Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922) [286]
The consequences of Israel's counter terrorism policy [262]
Asger Jorn and the photographic essay on Scandinavian vandalism (Inferno) [237]
"All of you are one" : the social vision of Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11 [229]
Saint Peter and Paul Church (Sinan Pasha Mosque), Famagusta: a forgotten Gothic moment in Northern Cyprus.[227]
The inferior vena caval compression theory of hypotension in obstetric spinal anaesthesia: studies in normal and preeclamptic pregnancy, a literature review and revision of fundamental concepts [209]







Top downloaded* items (Aug-Dec) 2011

Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland [330 downloads]
Retrospective power analysis [243 downloads]
Infernal imagery in Anglo-Saxon charters [131 downloads]
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism [82 downloads]
Translation as creative retelling : constituents, patterning and shift in Gavin Douglas' Eneados [67 downloads]
Subverting space : Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s [56 downloads]
Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922) [47 downloads]
WinBUGS for population ecologists: Bayesian modeling using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods [47 downloads]
What is social learning? [45 downloads]
Comparing pre- and post-construction distributions of long-tailed ducks Clangula hyemalis in and around the Nysted offshore wind farm, Denmark [45 downloads]

(*These are downloads recorded from within the repository. In future we will be able to track downloads direct from Google)